198 - Mi reise til alle verdas land

by Gunnar Garfors

Gunnar Garfors er den einaste nordmannen som har vore i alle land i verda. Utferdstrongen og eventyrlysta har resultert i sære opplevingar og ville påfunn, som Guiness-rekord etter besøk i fem verdsdelar på éin dag.
Han reiser ofte på impuls o gopplever verda i møte med dei han treffer undervegs. Då skjer det uventa og spennande ting, anten han er aleine eller saman med gode vener. Boka innehend historier frå kvart einaste land i verda, og er meint som inspirasjon til alle som vil på noko anna enn pakketur.
Garfors har òg laga fleire lister, som dei 25 minst besøkte landa i verda, dei fem favorittlanda hans i kvar verdsdel, dei 11 favorittbyane, dei farligaste landa og kva land som har dei flottaste kvinnene. Han gir gode råd om kvifor og korleis reise til stader du knapt visste om.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir

493 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2014

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. After all, I love travel writing in general. However, the numerous stories of his alcohol consumption and hook-ups in each country quickly became tedious. The plethora of typos (e.g. "sowing machine," "Papa New Guinea") were exceedingly distracting.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

As traveler I wanted to like this book very much, i started it to shorten my time in airports, trains and buses while traveling and finished it now while forced to stay home. And actually beginning and ending of this book i quite liked. There could be more information about countries he visited and i'm not a fan of stepping into country for couple hours just to be able to tick it as visited. But he had a bet and he wanted to win... But chapter 'Love and Marriage' and a bit before that - pretty much just bragging about his sexual conquests.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few could quantify the investment of time and money and emotional distress to visit 198 countries, and perhaps fewer could enjoy it as much as Gunnar. And Gunnar spends most of the time excitedly describing each adventure with a consistent level of enthusiasm. Though the visits share similarities: (Airport, restaurant, bar), they becomes as varied as people are. The people Gunnar meets in his journeys keep the stories fresh and provide the most unforgettable passages, like the Lesotho royalty or the Somaliland government official.

Cleverly organized in travel related topics (ex: "You've got to go here, "Here comes trouble", "Unreal Countries") For those who just want to stay in resorts or tourist shopping areas, Gunnar expresses his distaste for such almost as frequently as the difficulties procuring visas with unresponsive embassies (quite often).

On a more serious note, the book, in often unexpected ways, deals with the darker sides of life and travel around the world in the poverty,inequality, racism and prostitution he encounters. That he included the entire experience should encourage and not discourage more travel as it equips the traveler with the knowledge to avoid unsafe situations and put in perspective how nonthreatening they are to the broader travel experience.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book had such potential but totally let itself down. The author is arrogant and really should have edited the book before publishing. I wanted to learn about his travels and the countries and I came out thankful that I never ran into Gunnar on any of my travels.
PS it was that bad I couldn't finish it

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

This books offers a summary of each country in the world and the author's travels there. While these are quite interesting anecdotes, this is very poorly written and there is no plot.

[Angela Shurina · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a saying by Saint Augustine: "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page".

We all love traveling. But we not always can travel everywhere we want to go. We'd love to take a pick though, at least, at magical lands far away, don't we?
Travel magazines, travel guides are supposed to help us do that but most often they lack human touch, personal experience we can connect to, experience that makes us feel almost as we personally went to the place we read about.
198 does just that. It fascinates you. It makes you feel like you've actually visited each country personally. Met amazing people that are so different from you. Talked to locals. Experienced the culture of the place first hand, all its "weirdness" and uniqueness.
It makes you feel like you tried that strange food in India that made you sick like you've never been before.
Like it was you, having that intimate moment under the full moon with a friend from the far-away land. Moment that could easily put you both in jail.
...
This book inspires you to get a bit crazier, to dream a bit more, and to finally take the time off to live fully and travel to the far-away lands you've dreamed for so long about.

[Abigail · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like others, I really wanted to like this book - it was recommended by a friend who works in the radio industry and has met Gunnar Garfors at various industry conferences. I generally love travel books, so I was looking forward to reading (at least briefly) about some countries we don't normally get to read a lot about.

Instead, all we get are a set of poorly-written, immediately forgettable anecdotes of a couple of hundred words at most, normally consisting of "I went to country X and got drunk with my brother / had sex with my girlfriend / hooked up". He tells us very little about each country other than that it contains a bar or restaurant, and doesn't appear to have spent a great deal of time in any of them. Many of his anecdotes border on racist or misogynistic - I persevered with this book until the "Love and Marriage" chapter (which appears to be entirely made up of hookup stories). I gave up on the page in that chapter where Garfors makes a racist "joke" about the size of African men's penises.

The world would be a better place if Gunnar Garfors had stayed in his Norwegian village. They say travel broadens the mind, but this privileged white Scandinavian appears to learn nothing from his jaunts around the world.

[Aizat Affendi · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book started out interesting, with an engaging premise and some compelling travel stories. However, as I got further in, I found it increasingly off-putting. There’s an overemphasis on sex and a tendency to reduce women that he meets to objects rather than full people, which undermined the narrative for me. The author is also very open about his white privilege, but instead of offering thoughtful reflection, it sometimes came across as tone-deaf. At some points, the language and framing can feel a little racist. What could have been a fascinating global journey ended up leaving a sour taste for me.

[Christoffer Mæland · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hvordan gjøre besøk til alle verdens land dørgende kjedelig? Slik. Garfors gjør en kardinalfeil i å være navlebeskuende. Han forteller slett ikke om destinasjonene eller reisene dit, men serverer lange anekdoter om kompiser og kjærester, bruker brorparten av boka på å fortelle om at han har draget på damer (han framstår lite troverdig, forresten) og evner ikke å fortelle eller opplyse om landene som turist- eller reisedestinasjoner. Dette framstår som en ekstremt bortkastet mulighet, og jeg gremmes over at redaktøren har gitt boka tommelen opp.

[CNF · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst book I have read in a long time. A sexist, narrow-minded Norwegian travels the world and learns absolutely nothing about it. I could not finish reading this book it was too bad. From the Oyster story on page 150 I only flicked through it and read occasional country chapters- nothing special. Gunnar Garfors seems like the really annoying backpacker that you find in almost every hostel, the one that bores you to death with his "adventurous" and selfish stories.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fantastic concept utterly marred by so many stories of going to bars and hook ups. I wanted to read about other cultures and landscapes and adventure and how political situations affect daily life, and not something teeming with casual misogyny. In many instances I barely felt like I was in a differet country at all. Also, waaay too many typos.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, I did. As a fellow traveler, albeit on a much smaller scale, I really wanted to connect to this book and feel inspired to keep "collecting countries" as the author put it. But oh, there was no narrative, and the English translation editing was horrendous. Maybe it reads much better in Norwegian. I also particularly hated how there was very little context in each country's entry in the book - no dates, time of year, cost of transport and accommodation, etc. Sometimes he described how he got to a country, but it wasn't consistent. He also organized the book into "sections" instead of detailing the countries chronologically or by continent, which I did not like.

So overall, really cool thing that the author did, but I didn't like it overall. It took me ages to get through it - I started once several years ago and have picked it up a few times since, but finally read it to completion on a long flight (domestic, sadly).

[Barno · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I opened the book I was very sceptical and said it's going to be a boring one and I'm not going to laugh.
I stared reading the second page and broked laughing.
Humor used in the book is very well chosen and sarcastic.
I can say iv learned a lot from the perspective of a white guy traveling alone when it's different from an Asian girl traveling alone.
It's inspiring in terms of setting world record which one might try as a begginer on this field.
Why was lacking on this book is there was not much on some countries itself but more of a dinner/lunch times there and didn't get much of the people culture in general.
But all in all was a good summer read 2024

[Bjorn Delbeecke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe, the worst parts of the book, besides the rambling about drinking with bro's and ho's or the many English mistakes in writing, is where he makes clear he has no clue what 'average life expectancy' actually implies. It is heavilly influenced by infant mortality. An example on Lesotho: "I would presumably take over the chief title when my potential father in law would call it a night. The average life expectancy is only 48 years there, so a transition to power could happen relatively soon."

Just joking; it's all bad.

[Lukas Slavik · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first i have to say that i also love travelling and in many ways in the same form as the author -> avoiding packed tourist groups and such.. therefore i am quiet biased into loving the book..

also it is not a tour guide, so do not expect a list of to dos in every country.. travelling must be pretty spontanious and flexible.. the book is more about short stories from each country.. for someone who doesnt like independent travelling, the book may not catch their attention

[Mihai Dascalu · Rating 4 out of 5]

challenging at times

Stick to the end and this book gets better. In the middle it is painful to keep reading about grown men behaving as kids, pranks, drinking contest and so on. The author is obviously a very smart and educated man on a mission, he knows what he is doing and accomplishes it in the end but the way he develops his story is so painful at times, even pathetic. I was happy to see him grow up.

[Magdalena Marszałek · Rating 5 out of 5]

My sister is featured in one of the stories!!!!

[Siriann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspirerande, morsom og ein smule arrogant. Skulle gjerne hatt fleire små (fun)facts og færre drikkehistorier - men så er det jo igjen ei reisedagbok.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." ― Dr. Seuss

One of my all time favorite genres of non-fiction is the travel memoir. Memoirs on their own are usually more enjoyable (imo) than autobiographies since they only cover a certain period of a person’s life, rather than the entire thing, or a certain theme. And a travel memoir not only gives you insight into the person writing it but also into the cultures experienced and countries visited by the author.

My favorites include "My Life in France by Julia Child", "Tales of a Female Nomad" by Rita Goldman Gelman, "Kabul Beauty School" by Deborah Rodriguez, and J. Maarten Troost's first three books. I love that, even in the ones that aren’t written particularly well such as “Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia", the authors always share small details that bring to life the places they describe. Details that another author might not notice. Details I might never learn otherwise. Travel memoirs are a fun way to get a snapshot of a culture, a glimpse of understanding of a country or people you may know nothing about. They might inspire you to do research (which leads you to a four hour Wikipedia rabbit hole….) or even visit that place yourself.

The most recent travel memoir that I read was "198: How I Ran Out of Countries" by Gunnar Garfors. This guy holds a few world records (one for visiting the most number of continents in 1 day, the most number of US states in one day, and for most number of countries visited in 1 day) and is one of the few people to have visited every country in the world. (He explains how he determined 198 as the number.) The book doesn’t work entirely as a cohesive memoir but rather like a long string of blog posts glued together to tell the whole story, so sometimes there are abrupt endings to his tales or no connection between sections. And since it was originally published in Norwegian and translated into English by the author himself, there is some awkward phrasing and a lot of typos.

But I will forgive it those structural and grammatical faults for two reasons: Gunnar is so much fun to read, I felt like I was with him the whole time. He’s a guy I’d definitely want to hang out with (but maybe not travel with because he gets into some tight spots)! Secondly, he introduced me to places I’d never heard of or had forgotten about, places I would never have even considered wanting to visit or that I would never have given a passing thought to. It took me a month to finish reading this book because every chapter lead me to google something. So as a memoir, it might not hold up on its own, but as an inspirational travelogue, it was great fun!

[Daks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garfors certainly knows how to awaken the urge to travel and drive it into full gear. Few of us would have the budget or time to do this kind of feat, but it is inspirational nonetheless to follow his adventures throughout the world. I particularly appreciated his taste for non-touristy activities and destinations, and makes me want to travel to the least-known countries even more.

There was some disappointment however. There were times during the reading of this book that I was about to throw it out the window from being tired of reading about alcohol, women and the like. I would've liked to hear more about geography, both physical and human, but alas there was a lot of bar talk and to be honest it put a major damper on the reading experience.

Nonetheless, an impressive accomplishment that only of handful of people on Earth can say they have done.

[Manuela U · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't finish this book, it's so sexist! I am an avid reader of adventure travel books so I thought I would learn something new from this one. Unfortunately, it's more the kind of book for those into drunken lad culture anecdotes. Or all things middle-class materialist. There's no importance given to traveling sustainably, the author states his love of taking airplanes endlessly. Finally, while his encounters with locals are sometimes colorful they are mostly very superficial in character...as is expected when your main focus is ticking off countries from a list. This book could have been so much more.

[Arnau Duran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well worth reading it if you are an avid traveller (like me, though I haven't nearly visited as many countries). I found it an easy-reading and freshly-worded book. Since the experiences from each country are relatively short, one can read either five minutes or two hours without losing the track. I must say I also liked the style of the writer (short sentences, recurrent full stops, usually with fine irony). And obviously, I enjoyed reading through a large bagagge of experiences from all over the world.

Thanks Gunnar for the inspiration!

[Sorcered · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and ironic bite-sized memories of all the countries in the world. Very convenient for scattered reading, as you can finish any of the one-to-five page memories in a few minutes. I finished it during a trip, as expected for a travel book :)

[Francine Chu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting stories, as expected from such a seasoned traveler. However the crazy small font, lack of pictures and various spelling and typo errors makes this title feel like a random cobbled read